Since 2015, the Dragon Age franchise has been in a bit of franchise limbo, but now it is back. The series hasn't completely gone away thanks to comics and some books, but the upcoming Dragon Age: Dreadwolf marks a real sense of change for the series. This show comes at a time when more game franchises are being expanded with animated versions.
Dragon Age is a series of epics where characters travel across the lands to fight a great evil with a group of allies and willing organizations. Like Dragon Age II, Absolution is an intimate affair with a central plot to steal a powerful magic artifact. Maighread Scott told io9 that her pitch for the series was already written at the beginning. She said that it would be "Reservoir Dogs meets Black Hawk Down", with all the chaos, betrayals, and death that implies.
The world of Dragon Age made perfect sense to John Epler. He said that heists give an amazing pressure cooker for emotions and that you get a lot of mileage out of seeing people who shouldn't be together bumping against each other. Dragon Age loves to showcase relationships that are destroyed during the events of the caper, and they are fun because of that. Ask anyone who has played a game in the series, and they will likely tell you that the character they are playing is completely different from how you are.
Scott said that the relationships to Dragon AGe are the second pillar of the franchise, whether they come with player input or not. Epler said thatDragon Age is about the people. The series is about people and characters who make a difference. A lot of their impact isn't just on the people around them, but how those relationships manifest in the larger world. They can be healthy or not. The way you treat other people has consequences.
Scott knew that the show couldn't have the same feel as the games because of the short runway. Making the show's characters and relationships worth being invested in, and that they felt like natural additions to the world of Thedas, was the focus. The assassin of the elf was described as a wonderful imperfect hero. The show shows how growing up as a slave left her broken and how it affected her when she was a child. She is a hero because she is willing to fight for others.
In the previous games, Tevinter was mentioned a few times, and it will be in Dragon Age: Inquisition. It is the first time that players will experience the region before they experience it for themselves. The setting of the show in Tevinter was part of Scott's initial plan so as to offer a "small, scuplture" of the region before the fourth game expanded on what we see in the show. With how much influence Tevinter has over the rest of the world of Thedas, Epler felt that the show could be a good place to start talking about it. There is no other nation that has as much impact on the history of the world as Tev Inter. There is no nation that has so much tendrils out in the world.
Even though it is close to Dreadwolf, Absolution doesn't try to establish a canon for players to follow. It was important to avoid setting a definitive canon because some characters from the prior games show up for a spell. He acknowledged that it was a tricky balancing act because of the risk of conflicting with the canon players make on their own. There was a desire to make sure that the game stood on it's own. Epler said there were all the elements that made up Thedas. Leaving space for these stories to exist and feed into a larger world was fine with us.
The final moments of the game show that it won't leave the games untouched.
After leaving the rest of the crew behind, human mage Hira heads back to meet up with her true employer, the final villain of Dragon Age II. After her defeat in the game, she was locked up in a crystal prison, and her return means some interesting things for the game.
Scott and Epler explained that the show's writers wanted someone with "very specific and explicitly stated goals" and not to mention someone who BioWare hadn't already locked off. Everyone agreed that her determination to eliminate mages exemplified their criteria more than any other villain. Scott said that it was clear that Meredith was the best choice. There are few Dragon Age characters that people love to hate as much asMeredith.
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